Burger King’s campaign for International Women’s Day backfired on Monday when its attempt to draw attention to the male-dominated culinary world was criticized for sexism.
“Women belong to the kitchen”, the UK’s hamburger chain social media channel tweeted.
The restaurant followed this tweet, which has since been retweeted and quotes tweeted more than 250,000 times, with a subsequent message, “If they want, of course.”
“However, only 20% of chefs are women. We are on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry, empowering employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career, ”he wrote. The brand then announced that it would launch a scholarship that “will help Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!”
The first tweet was not accidental. The brand also ran a full-page ad in The New York Times, with the same message. “Women belong to the kitchen” was in giant letters; the additional context was in small print below.
The outrage was swift, even from competitors. Kentucky Fried Chicken’s game account tweeted at Burger King, telling him to delete his tweet.
But the people who run social media for “Whopper’s House” have doubled in size.
“Why would we delete a tweet that is drawing attention to a huge lack of female representation in our industry, we think you would also agree with that?” asked the brand, seeming to feign confusion.
Online, some wondered why the company didn’t take the most obvious path: changing its name to “Burger Queen” for a day.
“If you want to use sexism as a click bait, you’re obviously not celebrating International Women’s Day,” said Kerry O’Grady, associate professor at Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies, who heads her public relations and communications program. corporate.
O’Grady said it is clear that the brand tweeted “Women belong to the kitchen” to get attention. But using a decades-old sexist trope to get noticed is not an effective strategy, she warned.
“Burger King is now a brand associated with sexism,” she said, calling the campaign “such a failure”.
The brand seemed to justify the decision to itself, believing that people would read the topic, said O’Grady. But she said it was “just silly” to think that people would waste time reading the entire message.
In a statement on Monday afternoon, Burger King admitted that the tweet was “designed to get attention”.
“It was our mistake not to include the full explanation in our initial tweet and to adjust our activity going forward because we are sure that when people read our pledge in full, they will share our belief in this important opportunity,” a spokesman said, emphasizing that he is “committed to helping women break a male-dominated culinary culture.”
Even so, many think that the fast food giant had the opportunity to draw attention to a noble cause and spoiled it.
In the UK, women hold only 17% of chef positions, according to the Office of National Statistics. In the United States, women make up less than a quarter of the chefs’ ranks.
“I think the campaign is completely lost,” said O’Grady. “It didn’t have to be that way.”
